Have We Got the "Teen Brain" All Wrong? (Part Deux)

One thing that is commonly accepted as a truism in the USA is that crime, especially violent crime, is a young person's (and especially a young man's) vice.  It typically rises rapidly in the mid-teens and peaks around the late teens and very early twenties before rapidly and then gradually declining from then on, and it is often said that "the best cure for crime is a 30th birthday."  The statistics do indeed bear this out, but it is often accepted without question that the causes of this phenomenon are biological (particularly neurological and/or hormonal) as opposed to socioeconomic or cultural ones.

Well, a new study by researchers at Penn State seems to put the lie to the biological determinist theory.   While previous studies tended to look only at Western cultures (which all show a similar age pattern for crime), this one compared the USA to Taiwan instead.  If brain development (or lack thereof) is the cause, then the age pattern for crime should be pretty much the same worldwide, but it turns out that this was not the case for Taiwan.  Over there, crime peaked in the late twenties and early thirties, roughly a decade later than in the USA.  Thus, the researchers concluded that cultural factors, not biological/neurological ones, are primarly responsible for the crime patterns by age.   Notably, this is true even though the drinking age in Taiwan is 18, compared to 21 in the USA.

These findings also dovetail rather nicely with a 2015 study by renowned sociologist and youth-rights activist Mike Males.  Using crime data from California, he found that while the typical Western age-crime pattern for homicide (peaking at age 19) held true at first without controlling for poverty, once poverty was controlled for, that pattern basically vanished for all but the poorest communities, a group in which young people just so happen to be grossly overrepresented (and not just in California either).  And while some other studies have disagreed with such findings, those previous studies have generally failed to disentangle age, period, and cohort effects, greatly confounding the results.  Thus, especially in light of the Taiwan study, we can conclude that the traditional Western age-crime pattern is largely (if not entirely) a function of poverty, not age.  Which is actually good news, given that poverty is a much easier problem to solve (at least for a wealthy and Monetarily Sovereign nation like the USA) than any neurological issues or deeply-ingrained cultural factors could ever be.

It is very rare that a single study (or two) can overturn such an apparent mountain of evidence. Unless, of course, that "mountain" turned out to be a molehill all along--and a rather shaky one at that.

Why Age-Based Curfew Laws Are Still a Bad Idea

While the primary focus and goal of Twenty-One Debunked is getting the drinking age (and now the smoking and toking ages as well) lowered (back) to 18 and not a day higher, yesterday, we have always been adamantly against age-based curfew laws of any kind, period.   It should clearly go without saying that anyone who claims to support youth rights in general should oppose such an ageist abomination.  After all, freedom of movement is a fundamental civil and human right, and youth rights is about ALL young people, NOT just 18-20 or 18-24 year old young adults.  When we ignore that fact, we do so at our own peril, given the tendency for adultism to snowball, creep up the age scale, and ultimately backfire on adults.

And aside from the injustice aspect of curfew laws (the very archetype of so-called "status offenses"), both ageist and also intersectional with classism and racism, there are also utilitarian reasons to oppose these unjust laws.  It turns out that they most likely do NOT work as intended as far as reducing crime, in fact, they may actually increase crime by reducing the number of "eyes on the street" (and thus potential witnesses) at night.  For example, a recent study of Washington, DC's youth curfew law found strong evidence of increased gunshots occurring during the marginal hour of 11pm to midnight when the timing of the curfew varied seasonally.  Also, San Francisco saw a larger percentage drop in crime, particularly juvenile crime, than the nation as a whole the from 1990-2000 when they stopped enforcing their curfew law in 1992 and repealed it in 1995.  And NYC, who also saw more crime reduction than the national average, never had a youth curfew at all.  Thus, the evidence for any benefits of such laws is mixed at best, and the overwhelming weight of the evidence points to no benefit or more harm than good.

Thus, repealing these ageist abominations should really be a no-brainer.  As for the specious argument that curfew laws are a somehow necessary counterweight to peer pressure and social pressure for parents to be more lenient than they would otherwise be, that argument is also not valid in a free society.  What authoritarians and paternalistic types call a "race to the bottom", youth-rights activists, and in fact all genuine libertarians, call "freedom".  And since the neoliberal idea that "if you can, you must" is literally nothing more than the flip side of authoritarianism, the solution to that is LESS authoritarianism, not more.  You don't stop coercion by coercing, after all.  The "tyranny of the weaker brother" is still tyranny, the pompous self-righteousness of its advocates notwithstanding.

And finally, if curfew laws are so great, and our streets are really so dangerous these days (both dubious claims at that), why are their advocates not applying them to all ages then?  After all, most crime is committed by people over 18, not under.  And perhaps if in effect very temporarily (say, 90 days or less) in areas with very high crime, there may very well be a benefit to an all-ages curfew that would not be seen so much with an age-based curfew.  But again, if done willy-nilly and/or left on the books for too long, it may still have the same sort of racist and classist effects that loitering laws and other victimless crime laws have.  After all, if someone is arrested or cited for curfew violation and/or loitering, what it really means is that the cop couldn't get them for trespassing, obstructing traffic, theft, vandalism, violence, disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, littering, or anything else, but still chose to arrest or ticket them anyway, because reasons.  Or something.

Discriminatory curfew laws of any type have no place in a free society.  It should be "liberty and justice for all", not "liberty for just us, not all".

The Latest Moral Panic: Juuling in the Classroom

Those who are old enough to remember the 1973 song "Smokin' in the Boys' Room" by Brownsville Station (and/or it's 1985 Motley Crue cover version) would certainly remember that there was a whole lot of actual smoking going on in school or at least on school grounds back then.  Since then, in part because of the declining popularity of tobacco in general and in part due to today's stricter rules and laws governing smoking in and around schools, such conduct has declined considerably.

But now, there seems to be a new moral panic du jour taking hold lately:  Juuling.  What's that, you ask?  Well, JUUL is a fairly new brand of e-cigarette (vaping device) that was first launched in 2015 and really took off in 2017 in terms of popularity.  As for why it is so popular, it probably has something to do with the appealing fruity flavors and the fact that it is very easy to conceal since it literally looks just like a USB flash drive and doesn't smell like tobacco.  High school (and younger) students apparently even sometimes sneak using it in class, thus if one were to ever do an updated cover version of the aforementioned song for 2018, it might as well be called "Juuling in the Classroom".

So what should we make of all this?  First, don't panic, lest we continue to fuel a deviancy amplification spiral rather than let this fad burn out on its own.  The good news is that combustible tobacco consumption is now at a record low among young people, and still falling.  Vaping is actually rarely used by teens who have never also tried combustible cigarettes.  If anything, vaping in general (including, but not limited to, Juuling) is displacing combustible cigarettes on balance, and is significantly safer as well--perhaps even 95% safer by some estimates.  The bad news?  Vaping is, of course, not completely safe, as most vape juices (including all JUUL brand ones, even if its users don't realize it) do contain nicotine, which is highly addictive and is even a known neurotoxin, particularly for the developing early adolescent brain.  Other concerns include the relative lack of regulation as to how these things are made and what sort of contaminants may be lurking inside, but again, it still pales in comparison to the dangers of combustible tobacco cigarettes, which contain literally thousands of other nasty chemicals as well as nicotine, including many known carcinogens, mutagens, and teratogens.  So insofar as vaping displaces smoking, it is a net win for public health.

Secondly, we should note that this apparent fad exists even in states and localities where the age limit is 21 for both smoking and vaping (or at least for buying these things), including New Jersey.  Thus, raising the age limit is unlikely to solve anything in that regard compared with keeping it 18 and enforcing it on vendors the same as with combustible tobacco products.  Keep in mind that until fairly recently there was no age limit at all for vaping devices and liquids/pods in many states and localities.

And finally, there are practical ways of reducing any potential harm from all of this:

• Regulate vaping devices and juices/pods the same as combustible cigarettes (but no stricter), and require strong quality control standards and testing
• Warning labels alerting users about the fact that they contain the addictive drug nicotine
• Tax nicotine-containing vape juices/pods by weight or volume adjusted for nicotine content (but much lower than combustible cigarettes)
• Increase the number of nicotine-free vape juices, particularly for Juul brand ones which currently lacks such options 
• Consider banning or phasing out any vape juices/pods that have fruity, floral, or any other non-neutral or non-tobacco-style flavors unless they are completely nicotine-free ones
• Educate the public, especially young people, on the truth about vaping, particularly with an eye towards preventing accidental addiction to something they may not even realize contains nicotine at all
• Social norms marketing to help defuse any deviancy amplification spiral

Most importantly, we need to see the forest for the trees, and stop tilting at windmills already.